CR Community Learning Environment Proposal Pamela S. Johnston
EDIT 772: Web 2.0 Introduction CR is a human services agency that provides residential services at various levels of care to adults with intellectual and physical disabilities. The agency employs Residential Aides who provide a majority of the day to day care to consumers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even though Aides are the backbone of the agency, there are limited resources available to them to learn current and best practices of care, to get feedback on working with challenging consumers, or how to advance in their training or career. In order to address the lack of resources and supports for Residential Aides, a Community Learning Environment is proposed in order to provide them an opportunity to develop their own agency resource and support forum. This will not only fulfill a need for the aides, but also empower them within their jobs, and ultimately will lead to better consumer care and job satisfaction.
Community Learning Environment: The creation of a CLE for Residential Aides will provide a variety of information related to their professional and job duties. This may include information related to consumer care, training and educational opportunities, discussion boards for advice or feedback, Q&A section, agency policies and procedures, philosophies of care and more. Gradually the CLE will become a learning community or maybe a community of practice. The environment will include discussion boards, RSS feeds, links to resources, picture and video feeds, and a Q&A feature (maybe ask a supervisor).
Problem: Resources for Residential Aides are limited that help them provide quality care to consumers and to be successful in their career.
Learning Goals:
· Residential Aides will identify a variety of approaches that they can use with their consumers in provision of care.
· Residential Aides will list interventions and approaches that were successful/unsuccessful and provide and receive feedback.
· Residential Aides will identify resources that will help them provide care or promote their career and learning goals.
State of the Learner: Eventually the learners will engage in the environment on an ongoing basis in order to receive and add to its content. The site will be continually updated by feeds and posts by the users. As more information is posted and indexed, it would become a resource that any Residential Aide can go to and look at current and past posts for information that may be related to their problem.
SSLE: The CLE will be similar to PBWiki. The We Are CR Wiki will be used by Residential Aides to develop and promote and learning community. They will be adding content and resources, participate in discussion boards, and ask and answer questions from peers. The wiki will be monitored to ensure the information posted is appropriate and accurate. Audience: The target audience is Residential Aides that work in a human services agency that provides residential services at various levels of care to adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.
Focus and Scope: The audience will include Residential Aides of various levels of experience and years in the field. This will allow for feedback from a variety of perspectives. The scope will include all aides that work within this particular agency. If the environment and tools prove successful it can be expanded to all direct care providers to include counselors and habilitation specialists. The audience size will be approximately 240 Residential Aides that work full and part-time and as needed in approximately 30 programs throughout northern Virginia and Richmond.
Audience Needs: Residential Aides currently rely on each other and their supervisors for a majority of their support. Sometimes supervisors are not available due to their schedule or due to the shift the aide works to answer simple questions or provide immediate feedback. Also, feedback and practices that they learn from each other may not be best practice and may not be in line with policies, procedures, or protocol. The CLE will provide information that will be in line with the agency’s philosophy of care, best practices and protocols.
Audience Participation: Aides will participate asynchronously when they are able to do so from their program or home.
Reason for Initial and Continued Participation: Motivation to initially join and continue to participate in the CLE is a difficult problem. A majority of the audience tends to participate and engage in tasks that are directly related to their job function. However, there are a few things that the agency are already engaged in that my lead to participation. First, the employee intranet has a “Kudos” page that appears randomly when the intranet is first accessed. This reminds people it is there and it has shown to work because “Kudo” posts occur on a daily basis. It may be possible for the CLE to randomly open as the first page when the employee intranet is accessed not only reminding staff it exists but inviting participation and exposure to the tools and information it can provide. Second, the agency just implemented a monthly recognition program that provides monetary incentive based on positive posts on the Kudos page for both individual employees and entire programs. The recognition can also be tied to participation on the agency CLE. This may motivate staff to explore the tool and determine how he or she would like to participate. Finally, continued participation may be motivated by the recognition program and as the person continues to visit and use the site; find the tool is useful and beneficial. Continued use will be encouraged by supervisors in weekly supervision and supervisors can refer to the CLE as a place to ask and answer questions. Also yearly performance reviews can include the use of the CLE as a point of evaluation.
Content
Based on the learning goals of the SSLE, Residential Aides the main content will include information to help them learn ways to provide quality care to consumers. It will also be a place that they can learn about what is happening within the agency to include upcoming training, changes in policies and procedures, and agency events. The reason a SSLE was selected because another goal is to provide the Residential Aides their own platform for resources and sharing. The aides work at various programs throughout northern Virginia and Richmond and only interact with other aides within their program. The SSLE will provide them the opportunity to share and obtain ideas on working with consumers across the entire agency. Plus it may prevent ineffective practices from developing or continuing because the Aides will be able to access experiences and ideas that work in other programs and with other consumers.
The type of content that various resources may teach Residential Aides include but is not limited to:
Positive Behavioral Supports
One on One Supervised Care
Behavioral Management and Interventions
Person Centered Care
Application of Individual Service and Behavioral Plans
Creative ways to work with consumers with challenging behaviors or physical disabilities.
Enabling consumers to live as independently as possible.
How to respect individual choices and human rights without compromising consumer safety.
Application of nutritional plans and food preparation.
And more….
The content sources can be structured and non-structured. I envision a blog or discussion board where Residential Aides and post questions or problems and receive feedback and ideas from their peers. I also envision structured topic areas that staff can go to for basic information and “how to’s”. In both areas, the SSLE will need monitoring and mediation to ensure the advice provided is within best and appropriate practices and that confidentiality and HIPAA laws are not violated.
The primary media formats that can be used to provide instruction can include videos, links to Web resources, RSS feeds from blogs and news resources, discussion boards or an agency blog, existing educational content already available to Aides, photos, and networks. I already identified some videos on You Tube and other resources; as well as, existing blogs and networks specifically for Direct Care Providers. The resources and information will require consistent tagging and organization so Residential Aides can easily find information they are looking for quickly and easily.
It will be important that all information and resources posted on the SSLE abides by copyright laws. Copyrighted material that cannot be reproduces and placed on the SSLE will be provide by a Web link. Regarding the work and educational information that is created on the SSLE, it will be placed under an “attribution non-commercial share alike” license. Though I plan on making the SSLE only accessible and reviewable by agency participants, should it go public, the information would likely be valuable to others who provide direct care services.
Format: The SSLE for CR’s Residential Aides will be a wiki supported by Wetpaint.com. The layout is as follows:
· Home Page – Welcomes the learner and explains how the wiki works. The expected learning goals will be posted, as well, and learners can post their goals here.
· Intellectual Disabilities Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that focuses on topics related to individuals with intellectual disabilities.
· Mental Healthy Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that focuses on topics related to individuals with mental illness.
· General and Miscellaneous Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that any Residential Aide will benefit from despite the program they work in.
· Training and Educational Resources – Will include the training calendar of CR and other offsite training resources.
· Discussion Board – Will include posting of questions for discussion based on current happenings within the agency.
· Videos – Will include videos, primarily from You Tube, most of which will pertain to caring for consumers.
· Photos – Will include pictures posted for educational purposes but also pictures posted by Residential Aides of themselves or their programs, but they must be related to work and no pictures of consumers allowed due to confidentiality.
· Question and Answers – Will include questions posted by users that will be answered by their peers. Supervisors and directors will monitor this page to answer questions and make sure information posted is correct and according to agency policies, procedures, and protocols.
The Wetpaint wiki provides a variety of tools that supports the organization of the site; as well as, provides for dynamic content. The wiki will have the pages as previously described that can be easily edited and expanded. There are many widgets that will allow certain content to be added with minimal effort. Such widgets will include RSS feeds, a Google calendar, and Slideshow. Wetpaint also allows for easy posting of videos and photos on a Video and Photo page, but also within any page in order for easy viewing with minimal searching. One of the most important tools that allows for easy viewing and finding of content, is tagging. As postings are tagged, and if tagged consistently, content will be posted within the related pages. For example, if a user is posting to a discussion, he or she will find “Related Content” listed at the bottom of the wiki page based on how the content was tagged. This internal page linking through tagging will allow like content to be seen by the contributor and may encourage them to explore and view content that may have not necessarily known was there.
The reason for using a wiki as the SSLE was in order to promote a learning community within the agency. The main goals of the wiki are to provide a support resource for the Residential Aides and enable them to learn new skills and approaches in provision of care. By utilizing the wiki, the goal of meeting their own career and learning goals will be achieved. Why a learning community? The Residential Aides in the organization that have many years of experience can share their knowledge with newer staff. Also, supervisors, directors and nurses can add to the wiki as the experts in order to further the user’s learning. Hopefully, the learning community will promote the agency’s philosophy of care and mission.
Learning Environment Tools:
· Discussion Boards – Discussion boards will be used to facilitate discussions that address current issues within the agency, and will be maintained by the training manager based on information collected from metrics, incidents, skills gaps, and feedback from supervisors. The discussions will enable learners to apply their training and current knowledge to a variety of contexts and will also promote change of attitude that supports the philosophy of care within the agency.
· Page Threads – Each page provides the opportunity to post information related to the page or topic area, allowing for collaboration by all users. Page threads can be used to post questions, answers, resources, and whatever is valuable to the user.
· RSS Feeds – Feeds can be posted on any page utilizing a widget tool. There are feeds that address direct care provider issues and current events. This will allow learner to become aware of the goings on within their field and current best practices.
· Google Calendar – This is a widget posted on the training page so staff can see upcoming training events within the organization without have to leave the wiki and go to the employee intranet.
· You Tube Feed – You tube has a variety of videos related to care provided by Residential Aides that would provide continued informal training.
Primary Media Content: The primary media content types will be video. There are many videos available through You Tube and other sources that can be used to provide and enhance staff training. The wiki developed in Wetpaint is very supportive of importing video, especially You Tube videos as there is a widget set up specifically for You Tube. This will make it easy for administrators and users alike to imbed video; however caution must be taken when using this media type. Videos are a helpful instruction tool; however, only if they are providing correct information. Therefore, any videos that are posted must be reviewed for accuracy and removed if the information is incorrect. A disclaimer would probably need to be posted as well, but this would not be used in lieu of reviewing content and removing it if is incorrect or inappropriate.
Other media resources that can and will likely be used are Slide Share like content and photos, and the wiki does support easy posting of such items. However, such content will be subject to review and removal as video content.
Wiki Evaluation and Modifications: The wiki was reviewed by a peer and me in an effort to determine how well it meets the earlier stated learning goals and what changed may be needed. A review of the learning goals in relation to the prototype indicates that they will be fulfilled.
Goal 1 - Residential Aides will identify a variety of approaches that they can use with their consumers in provision of care. This goal is met through the availability of resources such as links, RSS feeds, training lessons and calendars that support learning of treatment approaches. The goal will be further supported upon contribution of content by the wiki participants on the various wiki pages and within the discussion forums. The reason a wiki was selected was in order to allow users to post ideas, suggestion, feedback, and successes, and within these posts, the Residential Aides will find approaches that will be useful to them in their jobs.
Goal 2 - Residential Aides will list interventions and approaches that were successful/unsuccessful and provide and receive feedback. This goal is achieved as the wiki was constructed with areas and tools to that enable users to contribute such information. The tools within the wiki that will support such contributions include the Questions & Answers page, the Successes page, Gabbly Chat instant messaging widget, and the discussion forums.
Goal 3 - Residential Aides will identify resources that will help them provide care or promote their career and learning goals. This goal is accomplished with the use of the Training & Development page which includes a CR training calendar, online lessons, and where training is occurring in the area. The other wiki pages also have RSS feeds for current news in the topic areas and links to other resources. Residential Aides are asked to consider think about what learning goals they have and how the wiki can help them meet those goals. Their posts and discussion will be a resources and means of learning ways to provide better care.
Peer feedback stated the introduction to the wiki was helpful in getting orientated to the site and how the wiki is used. He also liked the ability to chat while within the learning environment. It was suggested to include a Table of Content on the Home page with descriptions and links to the pages and their contents as a way to provide further orientation to the wiki. Based on the feedback, a table of content was added to the Home page and a link to a Flash tour of the CR wiki was added to the introduction.
Future versions of the SSLE may incorporate the following improvements:
Posting of a comprehensive video of the wiki to include a tour of the site, how to create a login, how to post and add content. The text description will be deleted.
Addition of other pages to include areas for different CR staff to include nurses, habilitation coaches, and counselors.
Add an Ask the Program Manager or Director option.
Have a page for comments and letters from the President.
Pamela S. Johnston
EDIT 772: Web 2.0
Introduction
CR is a human services agency that provides residential services at various levels of care to adults with intellectual and physical disabilities. The agency employs Residential Aides who provide a majority of the day to day care to consumers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Even though Aides are the backbone of the agency, there are limited resources available to them to learn current and best practices of care, to get feedback on working with challenging consumers, or how to advance in their training or career. In order to address the lack of resources and supports for Residential Aides, a Community Learning Environment is proposed in order to provide them an opportunity to develop their own agency resource and support forum. This will not only fulfill a need for the aides, but also empower them within their jobs, and ultimately will lead to better consumer care and job satisfaction.
Community Learning Environment: The creation of a CLE for Residential Aides will provide a variety of information related to their professional and job duties. This may include information related to consumer care, training and educational opportunities, discussion boards for advice or feedback, Q&A section, agency policies and procedures, philosophies of care and more. Gradually the CLE will become a learning community or maybe a community of practice. The environment will include discussion boards, RSS feeds, links to resources, picture and video feeds, and a Q&A feature (maybe ask a supervisor).
Problem: Resources for Residential Aides are limited that help them provide quality care to consumers and to be successful in their career.
Learning Goals:
· Residential Aides will identify a variety of approaches that they can use with their consumers in provision of care.
· Residential Aides will list interventions and approaches that were successful/unsuccessful and provide and receive feedback.
· Residential Aides will identify resources that will help them provide care or promote their career and learning goals.
State of the Learner: Eventually the learners will engage in the environment on an ongoing basis in order to receive and add to its content. The site will be continually updated by feeds and posts by the users. As more information is posted and indexed, it would become a resource that any Residential Aide can go to and look at current and past posts for information that may be related to their problem.
Audience: The target audience is Residential Aides that work in a human services agency that provides residential services at various levels of care to adults with intellectual and physical disabilities.
Focus and Scope: The audience will include Residential Aides of various levels of experience and years in the field. This will allow for feedback from a variety of perspectives. The scope will include all aides that work within this particular agency. If the environment and tools prove successful it can be expanded to all direct care providers to include counselors and habilitation specialists. The audience size will be approximately 240 Residential Aides that work full and part-time and as needed in approximately 30 programs throughout northern Virginia and Richmond.
Audience Needs: Residential Aides currently rely on each other and their supervisors for a majority of their support. Sometimes supervisors are not available due to their schedule or due to the shift the aide works to answer simple questions or provide immediate feedback. Also, feedback and practices that they learn from each other may not be best practice and may not be in line with policies, procedures, or protocol. The CLE will provide information that will be in line with the agency’s philosophy of care, best practices and protocols.
Audience Participation: Aides will participate asynchronously when they are able to do so from their program or home.
Reason for Initial and Continued Participation: Motivation to initially join and continue to participate in the CLE is a difficult problem. A majority of the audience tends to participate and engage in tasks that are directly related to their job function. However, there are a few things that the agency are already engaged in that my lead to participation. First, the employee intranet has a “Kudos” page that appears randomly when the intranet is first accessed. This reminds people it is there and it has shown to work because “Kudo” posts occur on a daily basis. It may be possible for the CLE to randomly open as the first page when the employee intranet is accessed not only reminding staff it exists but inviting participation and exposure to the tools and information it can provide. Second, the agency just implemented a monthly recognition program that provides monetary incentive based on positive posts on the Kudos page for both individual employees and entire programs. The recognition can also be tied to participation on the agency CLE. This may motivate staff to explore the tool and determine how he or she would like to participate. Finally, continued participation may be motivated by the recognition program and as the person continues to visit and use the site; find the tool is useful and beneficial. Continued use will be encouraged by supervisors in weekly supervision and supervisors can refer to the CLE as a place to ask and answer questions. Also yearly performance reviews can include the use of the CLE as a point of evaluation.
Content
Based on the learning goals of the SSLE, Residential Aides the main content will include information to help them learn ways to provide quality care to consumers. It will also be a place that they can learn about what is happening within the agency to include upcoming training, changes in policies and procedures, and agency events. The reason a SSLE was selected because another goal is to provide the Residential Aides their own platform for resources and sharing. The aides work at various programs throughout northern Virginia and Richmond and only interact with other aides within their program. The SSLE will provide them the opportunity to share and obtain ideas on working with consumers across the entire agency. Plus it may prevent ineffective practices from developing or continuing because the Aides will be able to access experiences and ideas that work in other programs and with other consumers.
The type of content that various resources may teach Residential Aides include but is not limited to:
- Positive Behavioral Supports
- One on One Supervised Care
- Behavioral Management and Interventions
- Person Centered Care
- Application of Individual Service and Behavioral Plans
- Creative ways to work with consumers with challenging behaviors or physical disabilities.
- Enabling consumers to live as independently as possible.
- How to respect individual choices and human rights without compromising consumer safety.
- Application of nutritional plans and food preparation.
- And more….
The content sources can be structured and non-structured. I envision a blog or discussion board where Residential Aides and post questions or problems and receive feedback and ideas from their peers. I also envision structured topic areas that staff can go to for basic information and “how to’s”. In both areas, the SSLE will need monitoring and mediation to ensure the advice provided is within best and appropriate practices and that confidentiality and HIPAA laws are not violated.The primary media formats that can be used to provide instruction can include videos, links to Web resources, RSS feeds from blogs and news resources, discussion boards or an agency blog, existing educational content already available to Aides, photos, and networks. I already identified some videos on You Tube and other resources; as well as, existing blogs and networks specifically for Direct Care Providers. The resources and information will require consistent tagging and organization so Residential Aides can easily find information they are looking for quickly and easily.
It will be important that all information and resources posted on the SSLE abides by copyright laws. Copyrighted material that cannot be reproduces and placed on the SSLE will be provide by a Web link. Regarding the work and educational information that is created on the SSLE, it will be placed under an “attribution non-commercial share alike” license. Though I plan on making the SSLE only accessible and reviewable by agency participants, should it go public, the information would likely be valuable to others who provide direct care services.
Format: The SSLE for CR’s Residential Aides will be a wiki supported by Wetpaint.com. The layout is as follows:
· Home Page – Welcomes the learner and explains how the wiki works. The expected learning goals will be posted, as well, and learners can post their goals here.
· Intellectual Disabilities Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that focuses on topics related to individuals with intellectual disabilities.
· Mental Healthy Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that focuses on topics related to individuals with mental illness.
· General and Miscellaneous Page – Will include resources and RSS feeds that any Residential Aide will benefit from despite the program they work in.
· Training and Educational Resources – Will include the training calendar of CR and other offsite training resources.
· Discussion Board – Will include posting of questions for discussion based on current happenings within the agency.
· Videos – Will include videos, primarily from You Tube, most of which will pertain to caring for consumers.
· Photos – Will include pictures posted for educational purposes but also pictures posted by Residential Aides of themselves or their programs, but they must be related to work and no pictures of consumers allowed due to confidentiality.
· Question and Answers – Will include questions posted by users that will be answered by their peers. Supervisors and directors will monitor this page to answer questions and make sure information posted is correct and according to agency policies, procedures, and protocols.
The Wetpaint wiki provides a variety of tools that supports the organization of the site; as well as, provides for dynamic content. The wiki will have the pages as previously described that can be easily edited and expanded. There are many widgets that will allow certain content to be added with minimal effort. Such widgets will include RSS feeds, a Google calendar, and Slideshow. Wetpaint also allows for easy posting of videos and photos on a Video and Photo page, but also within any page in order for easy viewing with minimal searching. One of the most important tools that allows for easy viewing and finding of content, is tagging. As postings are tagged, and if tagged consistently, content will be posted within the related pages. For example, if a user is posting to a discussion, he or she will find “Related Content” listed at the bottom of the wiki page based on how the content was tagged. This internal page linking through tagging will allow like content to be seen by the contributor and may encourage them to explore and view content that may have not necessarily known was there.
The reason for using a wiki as the SSLE was in order to promote a learning community within the agency. The main goals of the wiki are to provide a support resource for the Residential Aides and enable them to learn new skills and approaches in provision of care. By utilizing the wiki, the goal of meeting their own career and learning goals will be achieved. Why a learning community? The Residential Aides in the organization that have many years of experience can share their knowledge with newer staff. Also, supervisors, directors and nurses can add to the wiki as the experts in order to further the user’s learning. Hopefully, the learning community will promote the agency’s philosophy of care and mission.
Learning Environment Tools:
· Discussion Boards – Discussion boards will be used to facilitate discussions that address current issues within the agency, and will be maintained by the training manager based on information collected from metrics, incidents, skills gaps, and feedback from supervisors. The discussions will enable learners to apply their training and current knowledge to a variety of contexts and will also promote change of attitude that supports the philosophy of care within the agency.
· Page Threads – Each page provides the opportunity to post information related to the page or topic area, allowing for collaboration by all users. Page threads can be used to post questions, answers, resources, and whatever is valuable to the user.
· RSS Feeds – Feeds can be posted on any page utilizing a widget tool. There are feeds that address direct care provider issues and current events. This will allow learner to become aware of the goings on within their field and current best practices.
· Google Calendar – This is a widget posted on the training page so staff can see upcoming training events within the organization without have to leave the wiki and go to the employee intranet.
· You Tube Feed – You tube has a variety of videos related to care provided by Residential Aides that would provide continued informal training.
Primary Media Content: The primary media content types will be video. There are many videos available through You Tube and other sources that can be used to provide and enhance staff training. The wiki developed in Wetpaint is very supportive of importing video, especially You Tube videos as there is a widget set up specifically for You Tube. This will make it easy for administrators and users alike to imbed video; however caution must be taken when using this media type. Videos are a helpful instruction tool; however, only if they are providing correct information. Therefore, any videos that are posted must be reviewed for accuracy and removed if the information is incorrect. A disclaimer would probably need to be posted as well, but this would not be used in lieu of reviewing content and removing it if is incorrect or inappropriate.
Other media resources that can and will likely be used are Slide Share like content and photos, and the wiki does support easy posting of such items. However, such content will be subject to review and removal as video content.
Wiki Evaluation and Modifications: The wiki was reviewed by a peer and me in an effort to determine how well it meets the earlier stated learning goals and what changed may be needed.
A review of the learning goals in relation to the prototype indicates that they will be fulfilled.
Peer feedback stated the introduction to the wiki was helpful in getting orientated to the site and how the wiki is used. He also liked the ability to chat while within the learning environment. It was suggested to include a Table of Content on the Home page with descriptions and links to the pages and their contents as a way to provide further orientation to the wiki. Based on the feedback, a table of content was added to the Home page and a link to a Flash tour of the CR wiki was added to the introduction.
Future versions of the SSLE may incorporate the following improvements: